¡Feliz Navidad a todos!
Not a whole lot to report this week. The baptisms didn’t happen (AGAIN!) (*sigh*) and our lessons have been pretty normal. We’re having trouble getting new investigators because people are willing to listen for 5 minutes when we contact them in the street, but they don’t really want to listen beyond that. It doesn’t help that Elder Terrones has to do almost all the talking because I’m HORRIBLE at small talk, especially in Spanish! Who knew it would be so important to be able to talk about nothing for a while!
I discovered something really cool and really weird the other day while I was on companion exchanges with another elder, Elder Condori. About a week before he’d met a young man, 14 or 15, who had been sitting alone during a ward gathering on one of the many Peruvian microholidays. He’d talked to the young man, but he wasn’t really open and didn’t say much. One of the only things Elder Condori could get out of him was the name of his less-active aunt who lived nearby. While I was with him, we went and visited this woman and found that she didn’t have a nephew, or any relative, with the name of the young man! The only one that would fit the description had died several years ago and was the reason this woman became inactive in the Church! We think it was a ghost or an angel or something that knew this woman needed the Gospel in her life again! Crazy!
Well, not much else to report. This week’s been pretty slow, and we’re not really having a whole lot of success. We’re going to try to turn it around this week, but with Navidad who knows if we’ll have many people who want to listen with the holiday so close. Wish us luck!
A couple of random thoughts: South American movies are really weird; using actual paper for toilet paper is not a great experience; I’m not sure if telling a fan it’s a child of God during a practice lesson is false doctrine; and epileptic people can’t teach at night here.
Now to explain:
Last P-Day we watched an Argentinian movie with a really strange plot: A guy is really good at foosball and beats a jerk who doesn’t like to lose. So Jerk Guy comes back many years later, now a professional soccer player, and is still angry about losing. So he does the natural thing: buys the town and steals the girl friend of Foosball Guy. So Foosball Guy has to go save her and then beat Jerk Guy and his professional soccer team at soccer with the help of tiny living foosball players. Is that weird or what?!
Not sure I really need to explain the TP thing. We were out of toilet paper and, well… yeah.
With the fan, we were practicing teaching an investigator about their divine lineage as a child of God. But our “investigator” was a fan and we told it it was a child of God. I don’t think that’s a sin, but it IS false doctrine…
Epileptic people, beware Peru at night during Christmastime. Every house has flashing Christmas lights (that play songs, too) that make my head hurt if I look for too long. Part of that could be because the music these lights play repeat indefinitely and EVERY set of lights plays the exact same songs!…
Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll let you know when something interesting happens, but you’ll have to wait until next week! ¡Quédese!
— Elder Schroeder